A Very Lytton Halloween 2011
by LovelyLytton
Summary: In the dark of winter, the deep darkness of the forest isn't a safe place to be. It's dangerous to wake the trees.


**Title:** A Very Lytton Halloween 2011

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><p>By the time he moves to that small cliffside village, he's really had it with most people. He hates his job, he doesn't keep in touch with his parents because <em>they<em>hate that he hates this job, which just makes him hate them (it's a vicious circle) and oh yeah, the divorce might have also played a part in the whole thing. His bitch of a wife got the house, his friends, his dog, hell, she even got his motorcycle and his golf clubs. So he thinks fuck it. He gives everyone the finger, quits the job, packs his belongings into thirteen boxes and drives and drives and drives until he finds the village. Or until the village finds him. With these kinds of things, it's always hard to tell.

Tiny houses spread across the cliffs, looking like they will crumble into the sea in a few years time. From the other side, a forest springs, and it seems as if the trees are hell bent on pushing the houses into the ocean should the cliffs not crumble on their own. This sense of doom makes him feel that he could stay here for a while. This place has no hope left, and he feels like that about himself too. He's a temperamental guy, but normally he has his highs just as often as his lows. Not since the divorce though. He really thought they could make it work. They met a few years ago and like many men before him (and undoubtedly, many more after him), he fell for her cheeky smile and the killer body. That face also helped. Even now, he can't deny that she's hellishly pretty with all that long blonde hair and those big blue eyes.

But of course, it wasn't enough. He wasn't enough. He could feel it when he touched her, and when he caught her staring across a room. Never said anything of course, but he knew it anyway. It's why cheating had been so easy. When she found out, she took him to the cleaners. He hates that he now has to pay for her life without actually being in it just because he wasn't discreet enough when he felt up that chick in the bar.

But here in the village, that won't happen. There's no wife, and no bar, and since every woman around here seems to be at least sixty-five years old, he doesn't think he find someone to cheat with. Oh wait - it wouldn't be considered cheating anymore, not now that he's divorced anyway.

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><p>So he rents a small furnished house at the edge of the village. A tiny dirt road leads to it, and there is no house to its right or left. It's sits alone at the end of the street (if you can call it that). It's the only street in the whole village leading away from the cliffs and towards the spindly forest.<p>

The house might have been what people call picturesque once, but underneath the grey sky and with the white paint cracked on its walls, it now looks anything but. It looks unloved, abandoned. A few of the trees from the forest are creeping closer to the house, leaning towards the roof. He can tell that he will have to saw them off at some point or they will grow right into it, ripping this new home of his apart before he's even unpacked his boxes.

He isn't a nature boy, but he knows that the trees lining the forest are all birch trees. None bear leaves. Autumn is giving way to winter these days so they've already fallen. They coat the ground: a dirty, rotting, reddish brown mass that squishes when you wade through it and is covered by frost early in the mornings. The trees themselves, bare and white and thin, look eerily like bones. This is what he lives next to now, a forest of bones.

This is what life has come to, he thinks, and hauls the first off his boxes through the door.

* * *

><p>He takes a job as a builder. He's always been good with his hands, fixing things. There's a small company one village over, and they hire him on the spot. It might be because the boss lives two streets (or dirt roads, really) down from Noel's place or because Noel's a big guy, six foot six, with broad shoulders and strong arms. He can carry a lot of heavy stuff and that makes up for his inexperience. His mornings now start at five, a change from his office job in the city. When he leaves the house, it's still night, the birch trees behind him glowing in the dark.<br>There are no streetlights near his house and when he walks to his car, his steps are hurried. Sometimes (even though he knows it's stupid and what is he, a little girl?) it feels as if the trees are watching him, as if their long branches will reach for him, dragging him inside the forest to do God knows what. He doesn't like to think about it for too long. Not that he's superstitious or anything.

In the evenings, he sits inside his house, curtains drawn. No idea where the curtains came from - they were already there when he moved in, and already drawn too. He just left them as they were and now he doesn't mind. He doesn't want to see those trees when he's on the battered couch, kicking back a beer. He drinks a lot these days. It helps him not think about her, and the hurt look in her eyes when she found him making out with another woman.

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><p>Six weeks into his new life, his boss - a shrewd, sharp, chain-smoking man - tells him about the other house. It's supposed to be only five minutes away from the one he's renting, right behind those birch trees, before the forest thickens and firs cloud up the ground. Apparently, the house has been empty for years. Nobody can get any tenants to track the five minutes into the woods. There's no road, only a path, and even that one is so overgrown that Noel hasn't spotted it yet. His boss already offered to help him clear the road to the house, make it a part of the village once more. The forest house is for sale, an absolute bargain, his boss has assured him, much cheaper than rent in the long run. Since the divorce has taken most of his savings away, a bargain is exactly what he needs.<p>

So this evening, when he gets home, the dusk spreading out over the sky, he looks for the path. It's supposed to go right through the middle of the trees, but he can't see it, try as he might. Five minutes into the trees if one walks briskly, that's what his boss said. Then there's the house, sitting behind a little locked gate.

Noel shivers and zips his jacket up. It's getting really cold; his breath is coming out as white mist. He tried to turn the heater on yesterday, but it didn't work. He does have a fireplace, though. He can light a fire, but for that he'll have to get some wood. He eyes the tree edging the property, and decides to fell it tomorrow after he's looked at the the forest cottage. It'll be Sunday, his day off, and he can do it when it's light outside. The idea of felling a tree and walking into the woods when darkness is falling makes him nervous, so he'll just do both tomorrow. Yes, tomorrow. A much better idea (a safer idea, a voice whispers in his mind).

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><p>He dreams that night.<br>He dreams of his wife running through the woods, hurrying through the trees. They reach for her, those long white branches, and snag around her wrists, holding her in place. She's fighting them, but they won't let go. Noel watches helplessly as the seasons change while she's in their grip, the trees gaining and loosing leaves once, twice, three times, all the while holding on to his beautiful girl until all the flesh (it's red, a shocking splash of colour amidst the whiteness of the trees) has fallen from her body. It mingles with the leaves on the ground, a brown mass that squishes when you wade through it and this feels so real, too real, and he wants to wake up, please he wants to wake up. Her eyes go last, big and blue and pleading, until they too are the milky white of the trees. For a moment, everything is.  
>Then her bones reach out to him, thin skeletal fingers straining to reach his hand, and suddenly, those bones are gone and a leafless birch takes their place - or does it?<br>Isn't it still her?

He wakes up. The sunlight is battering against the curtains.

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><p>It takes him longer than he likes to shake the dream and even though he doesn't care about her anymore, and it was only a fucking dream, he reaches for his mobile while he waits for the kettle to boil. He still remembers her number, all twelve digits. Her dial tone sounds shrill, and he almost hangs up again, but then there's her voice, soft and warm in the way he tried so hard to forget. She likes to sing under the shower, and while she makes breakfast, and there used to be a time when he liked nothing better than to listen her.<br>"Noel?" She sounds sleepy and for a moment, he wonders if she's alone in bed. In his bed. In his house. If she's now singing for someone one else.  
>"Mina," he says, and his heart breaks all over again.<br>"Are you okay?"  
>He nods, not realising that she can't see him. "Just wanted to say hi," he murmurs, and then flips his phone shut. He doesn't want to hear what she has to say.<p>

The kettle whistles and he prepares his tea, careful not to burn his hands with the hot steam. Shrugging on his jacket and slipping into his boots, he grabs the thermos mug with the tea in it and sets out to find the path first and then the house in the forest. Why he wants to do that is beyond him, honestly, it is. He could just continue renting this place, it would do.  
>Only that at some point, he'll have to start picking up the pieces of his life again, and a house of his own might do the trick. One he can fix up. He can widen the path with his boss's help, rip some of those ugly birch trees out to make place for a small road. It's an occupation that would do away with the boredom he feels in the long, lonely hours of the weekend. It might keep him from missing Mina. It might be what he needs.<p>

He walks out of his house, pulling the door shut behind him. He doesn't bother locking it, he has no valuables here anyway and it's not as if anyone would ever randomly visit a place this far out. That's when he wonders when someone walked up to the forest cottage last, and who it was.

And who owns the forest cottage? Wouldn't that person have wanted to rent it out? What kind of landlord doesn't keep a road to a house clear? His boss didn't tell him who the owner was, only that the place was for sale, that it was cheaper than real estate had any right to be and that it might be a good idea for Noel to take a look at it.

These are the thoughts that swim through his mind as he sets foot among the trees. Their white bark has flaked off in places, as if the trees were snakes, shedding their skin. Noel reaches out and runs his hand over one, tugging at it until a bit of bark comes loose. It feels dry, dead. But everything is dead in a winter forest, he tells himself and squaring his shoulders, moves further inward to look for the house.

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><p>He still hasn't found the path. There are spaces between the trees that he can slip through, fallen logs he can climb over, mounds of old rotting leaves that he tries not to step into, his dream still too present in his thoughts. In his dreams, the leaves weren't leaves at all. They were Mina's flesh and even now, in broad daylight, this is what they look like to him. It's the rusty red of them, the colour of dried blood.<p>

The deeper he moves into the woods, spindly as they are, the more lost he feels. When he looks behind him, he can barely see his house, it's as if the trees have moved and closed off the way back to civilisation. But that's stupid, right? It must be the angle. So he takes a few steps to the left, his eyes fixed on where his house should come into full vision at any moment now. It doesn't; the opposite happens. All he can see are the trees, thin and white and bony and- closer. They are closer now, he's sure of it. The one that bends to the left as if it had a weight hanging from it, that one was at least ten feet away and now he could touch its branches if he'd stretch out his hand.

His heart beats faster and he realises that he doesn't care about the other house's location anymore. He'll continue to rent the place he has now. The forest can keep its secrets, so long as he doesn't become one of them. He doesn't care for the bargain, for the new start. All he wants is out. Why can't he see the village? He didn't walk for long, but at some point while stepping around logs and climbing over a fallen tree and wading through the leaves while keeping his head down so that the branches didn't slap him in the face, he'd lost his way.

He turns around, but everywhere he looks, he sees trees trees trees, nothing but white, bare trees. That's when he drops his thermos mug, and breaks into a run. He won't rot here like Mina did in his dream. He doesn't know where he is running to, just that he needs to move, needs to get away from the skeletal trees that creep closer the longer he stays in one place. So he runs, sweat running down his back, hair sticking to his forehead, cold air piercing his lungs. The branches tear at his clothing, slap him in the face, ripping at his flesh. They burn like a million paper cuts. But he is too afraid to go slower, so he keeps on running, propelled forward by a primal fear.

Finally, he stumbles and falls down, his knees and hands breaking the fall that would have otherwise broken his leg. Looking up, he sees a small brick wall with a wooden gate. It might have been green once, but now it's just the brownish colour of decay.  
>He has found a house.<br>But not his own.

He turns around and looks at the forest, so still, so calm. Some trees are tall and straight, others spindly and crooked. None of them move, but there is a soft breeze in the air that wasn't there before and it carries a foul smell with it. The leaves on the ground begin to dance on the wind, softly floating and spiralling towards the house.  
>It's the most threatening thing he has ever seen.<br>Noel pushes himself to his feet again, and without hesitating, opens the gate and takes the five steps to the house. The door is ajar.  
>He goes in, slamming it shut behind him.<p>

In the forest, the sound of a key turning in a lock resonates across the cold winter landscape. The breeze dies down, the leaves sink back to the ground, ready to resume their decay. Everything goes silent.

Until the scream, that is.

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><p>"Hi, I'm looking for Noel Allen."<br>He looks up from his seat behind the counter, and finds himself opposite a striking woman. She has long blonde hair, and even though she could be his daughter, he finds himself staring at her chest. Then he snaps out of it and looks up at her face again. Her eyes, a deep blue, are worried. He knew someone would come asking about the tall man at some point. He didn't expect it to be so soon.  
>"Haven't seen him for weeks," he says, and she swallows. She's wearing a scarf and a hat, decked out against the freezing temperatures outside. Her coat and purse are bunched up in her arms.<br>"But he was here, right?"  
>The old man nods. "I hired him. Good man; strong. Reliable." He shrugs. "Well, until he wasn't. Thought he'd gone back to the city, to be honest."<br>She wrings her hands, and he notices that she still wears a wedding band. Noel had mentioned the divorce, once, maybe twice. "He didn't hand in a letter of resignation?" she asks, and he snorts. He reaches for his cigarettes and lights one up. The blue smoke hits her right in the face.  
>"Lady, that's not how we do it around it here. He asked me whether I could take him on, I said yes, and that's it. No paper work." No paper trail, he thinks smugly, and wonders how Mina Allen even found her way here.<br>"And he just disappeared?"  
>"Yeah. Didn't come to work. Put me in a jammy, you know? Me and the others had to put in overtime. And I still haven't found someone to replace him. Tricky. Not many people come here."<br>"Did he say anything about going away?" She is almost pleading now, hands clutching her purse. She's a nail biter, he notices, and debates sending her home.

But then he thinks of the village, trees pushing from one side, and cliffs crumbling on the other, and of how it's a miracle that it hasn't tumbled into the ocean yet. Only that it's not a miracle. He sizes her up, and decides that like her ex-husband, she will do.

"You know, there's a small house in the forest on the other side of the village that Noel mentioned. Why don't you look there?"  
>She nods, and thanks him, and is out of the door in seconds. She'll buy them another year or two, he thinks, and takes a deep drag of his cigarette. Pity she's so pretty. What a waste.<p>

Outside, the snow begins to fall, covering the reddish-brown leaves in the forest. In the snow, you can almost not see the birch trees, tall and spindly and looking oh so much like bones. They disappear in the whiteness of winter.  
>But they're there, make no mistake.<br>They always are.

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><p>***<strong>The End<strong>***


End file.
